slow wireless internet

i just got new sager 5760 and my wireless connection seem too slow. it takes time to load pages and when watching sreamed videos it just says buffering at the bottom and counting up by 1% at a time, then when it reaches 15% or so it would go back dovn to 1%. my girlfriend has 2 years old acer and while in the same room it works fine. pages load fast and video is working without stopping and buffering every five seconds. do you know what might be wrong? also when iam downloading files on my girlfriends laptop speed is 300-700kb/s on mine it is only around 60kb/s.

 

Try updating the drivers for your wireless card and the firmware for the router. You might also consider changing the channel of the router to 1 or 11. Start there and see what happens.

 

yes i have all the latest drivers installed and tried to change that channel but it is same as before. slow slow. my download speed while downloading drivers was just 20kb/s. thats too slow for g.

 

Do you have any kind of firewall that might be limiting your activity?

It honestly sounds like a wireless card or driver issue. What kind of card do you have?

 

need to know:

1. what wifi card?
2. what router?
3. what are you downloading?
4. what are you using to download whatever it is you're downloading?

 

my wireless card: Internal Intel 3945ABG 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN
router: linksys modelwrt546
downloading: i was downloading new drivers for wireless using firefox browser
no firewall

note that my old acer laptop works with this router with no problems. never had to upgrade wireless drivers and would get download speeds 300-600kb/s. now iam just getting 20kb/s with new laptop.

 

Are you using the preinstalled software that came with the laptop to manage your wireless connection? If so, try to uninstall it and let windows do that for you. If that's not the issue then maybe you should check in Hardware Manager if your wireless card is configured for maximum performance not maximum battery life

 

powermanagement is off. and yes i tried to let windows manage wireless, but that didnt help at all. in one thread i read that the wireless card natena cables might be switched with another one causing problems. do you think this could be an issue? is it easy to swap those cables? where in the laptop is wireless card located? would that void waranty if i do that?

 

It would void the warranty for sure. If you still want to do that, here http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=155215 are some great photos of where everything is. Hope I'm not violating any forum rules by linking to different forum... There isn't a Sager Specific section here so...

Are you sure you have the latest drivers from here http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2259&lang=eng??? If so, I read that disabling 802.11a on the wifi card might help. Seems you are not the only one with that problem.
If none of the above helps maybe it's some kind of conflict between the card and the router. Try taking your lappy to a hot spot, connect and check if the same thing happens.

 

well i wouldnt void the warranty. i have all those drivers installed. i will try reinstal firmware on my linksys, see what happens. do you think uninstalling sp2 or reinstalling windows might help?

 

It doesn't hurt to try. Sometimes a clean install works wonders. Let us know how it goes but if it's still an issue after that, then maybe you should contact Sager.

 

This is what I found on Intel's websight

Wireless LAN Products
PSP (Power Save Polling) Causes Connection Issues With Some Access Points

Symptom(s):
If the wireless access point / wireless gateway does not properly support the PSP feature, intermittent loss of wireless connection, inability to initiate a wireless connection, or poor wireless connection data performance could result. The symptoms may be more pronounced when on battery power.

Cause:
In a mobile environment, power save polling mode is a feature for extended battery life for mobile stations. The capability requires coordination between the access point and the laptop's wireless adapter for proper operations. Intel has discovered the feature may not be implemented correctly or completely in some wireless access points or wireless gateway devices.

Solution:
Contact the access point vendor for an updated software which corrects the problem.

As a temporary workaround, manually set the adapter to CAM (continually aware mode), which disables the PSP capability. To do this, in either Intel® PROSet for Wireless Software or the Network Control Panel Applet (NCPA), in the power management section, uncheck the DEFAULT / AUTO selection and set the slider for HIGHEST / MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE

Notes:
To ensure the adapter is set to CAM - if the slider is already at the HIGHEST / MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE setting, move the slider to another setting and then back to HIGHEST / MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE.

On certain systems implementing Bluetooth* Co-existence, putting the WLAN NIC into CAM Mode may affect operability of the Blue tooth device. Check with your computer manufacturer for more information.

Your laptop may or may not have the PROSet for Wireless Software or you may be using a software version that does not include this setting. In this case use the NCPA to make the settings change.

The NCPA is accessed via Start >> Control Panel >> Network Connections >> then right-click to select Properties >> Configure >> Advanced Tab. For software version 9.x and later, the NCPA can be accessed through advanced...adapter menu choice.

With AUTO (PROSet) or USE DEFAULT VALUE (NCPA) selected, the adapter attempts to make a balance of battery life vs. performance by setting to a higher level 1 if the laptop is on AC power, and to lower level if on DC power.

They say this network card is compliant with service pack2. Also there have been reported problems with 2,4Ghz cordless phones around the device (same frequency). You don't have one by any chance?

One more thought... not sure if this makes any sense, but for instance if your wirless card is 22Mb but your router only 11Mb
you might want to set the card to only use 11Mb. For some reason I keep on thinking that it's some compatibility issue with the two devices. Did you try getting it to work in a hotspot? That should give us some clue to what is wrong.

Are you using any sort of encryption? If so try disabling it.